A number of methods have been employed in order to make various types of bread products, such as loaves, buns, rolls, biscuits, and breadsticks, from a sheet of dough. In such systems, a sheet of bread dough may typically be extruded, reduced and provided to a conveyor which conveys the sheet of dough along a dough travel path. The sheet of dough then encounters one or more cutting apparatus, such as slitter wheels, guillotine-type cutters, reciprocating head cutters or rotatable drum-type cutters. In general, such cutting techniques render a baked product having sharp edges, rather than round edges resembling a hand made product. In the past, a rounded edge product has been obtained by placing small balls of dough in rollers which roll the balls of dough into a substantially spherical shape. The dough spheres (or dough balls) are then placed in individual baking pans so that they can be baked, much as a conventional dinner roll is baked by a consumer.
Further, it is often desirable to form boule-shaped products, which require forming dough into a round shape to produce an oval or spherical ball-like bread product. Traditionally, this type of bread product was individually baked in a European boule pan in order to result in a specifically shaped product. Once boule-shaped bread products are baked, the interiors may be cut or scooped out and the hollowed loaf is then used as a “bread bowl.” Still, such individual baking techniques are very low throughput techniques. To say the least, they are less than desirable for commercial applications in which it is necessary to process many pounds of dough per minute. Thus, there is a need for a process for forming boule-shaped dough products that may be efficiently used in a high speed production line.